The two-step race to replace former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco for nearly 40 years, is nearing its first cut.
City residents will winnow the field in the June 2 primary, and early voting has begun. The top two finishers will face off in November.
Whoever prevails, San Franciscans can count on some political predictability. But there are notable differences among the top three candidates, including their stances on housing and how to address a nationwide shortage. Two of the three leading candidates have honed their approach in the hothouse of San Francisco’s housing politics.
State Sen. Scott Wiener is the frontrunner. He has represented SF in Sacramento since 2016. Before that, he was a two-term supervisor for District 8 — the Castro, Noe Valley, and Glen Park.
Running second – and gaining ground, according to a poll he commissioned – is Saikat Chakrabarti. He made a fortune as a tech engineer before joining Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for her underdog 2018 campaign and, for a few months, served as her chief of staff in Washington.
The other main candidate is Connie Chan, who cut her political teeth as a longtime City Hall aide. She’s been elected twice to her Board of Supervisors seat in the Richmond District and has experience as the board’s budget chair.
(There are several other candidates who have mostly not met thresholds for inclusion in local debates.)
The three main candidates hew to a line required for election in San Francisco. Foremost, they’re in lockstep denouncing President Donald Trump, his taste for authoritarianism, and many of his policies.
When you’re following perhaps the most influential San Francisco politician in generations, it’s a difficult position to be in.
SF political strategist Sam Lauter
They have other stances that look similar at first but show daylight upon closer inspection. The issue most relevant to San Francisco is housing.
They all promise to fight for more. The housing shortage has sparked local and state fights for years, with Wiener, a torchbearer for more development and looser regulations, in the center of the scrum. It’s an ever-growing national issue as well, as costs of all kinds rise, and the winner of the race could have a chance to work on bipartisan housing bills — an idea that seemed like a pipe dream when Trump won reelection in 2024.
“There’s an appetite for ways to create more housing, and there’s no time like the present,” says California Council for Affordable Housing director Jennifer Abbott.
But San Franciscans are accustomed to Pelosi bringing home the bacon and wielding outsized power. She addressed the AIDS crisis in her very first House speech, and she helped create the Presidio Trust after the Army left in the 1990s.
When she’s gone, the city shouldn’t hold its breath for near-term benefits.
“It’s not easy for a freshman member who needs to be told where the bathrooms are to make an impact,” says SF political strategist Sam Lauter. “When you’re following perhaps the most influential San Francisco politician in generations, it’s a difficult position to be in.”
Or as Wiener acknowledged during an Apr. 15 candidate forum, Pelosi is leaving “big heels to fill.”
So what are San Franciscans really voting for in this election? What are the stakes for the winner? And what can Pelosi’s replacement do besides decorate a desk?
Against Trump, and beyond
Although the race has had feuds and run-of-the-mill shenanigans, the candidates’ platforms look much the same.
They vow to defend LGBTQ rights, condemn the federal crackdown on immigration (Chan and Chakrabarti are immigrants themselves), and decry the gutting of federal programs and agencies.
It’s not just anti-Trump. At the April forum, all three supported rules banning Congressmembers from stock trading while in office. Pelosi is noted for her large and profitable trading portfolio.
The candidates do sharply diverge on two proposed wealth taxes: California’s one-time “billionaire’s tax” to fund health care, and an effort to increase SF’s tax on businesses with extremely well-paid CEOs. Wiener says the taxes will stifle economic recovery; Chan and Chakrabarti are all-in for both.
There are other, more subtle differences. Early in the race, Wiener condemned Israel’s tactics in Gaza but declined to use the word “genocide”; Chakrabarti and Chan have had no qualms with the description. Wiener is Jewish and draws a distinction between Israel’s right to defend itself, which he ardently supports, and the current government’s “destruction” of Gaza. He changed his mind on the use of “genocide” in January after getting booed at a debate.
But housing is arguably the most consequential issue for San Francisco. So much of the city’s long-term affordability — which is tied to homelessness, public school enrollment, and more — depends on bringing down prices and increasing the stock at all income levels.
All the candidates want to bring the financial might of federal dollars to housing construction, which Washington has more or less abandoned since the 1970s. It now subsidizes rents via Section 8 housing vouchers and similar tools that recipients use for private rentals.
But new bipartisan housing interest has recently emerged. In March, the Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD To Housing Act 89 to 10. Among other things, it directs federal funds toward affordable housing development and emergency housing for the homeless. The House passed an earlier version but has yet to vote on an amended version. Trump wants a bill on his desk soon.
Chan and Chakrabarti say the ROAD Act is a good start. Wiener goes further and calls it “a generational step forward” in comments to The Frisc.
All three criticize investment firms amassing portfolios of single-family homes. (One sticking point with the ROAD Act is a proposed cap on the size of those portfolios.)
But all have their own housing proposals as well. They sound similar, but they stem from very different philosophies.
In fact, one could say that Wiener and Chan have worked at cross-purposes for some time. In Sacramento, Wiener and allies have crafted bill after bill in Sacramento to spur more housing for all income levels. First elected to her seat in 2020, Chan often opposes incentives for market-rate development.
The starkest example is SF’s Family Zoning Plan, made possible (and necessary) by a Wiener law that gave state regulators muscle to threaten stiff penalties for cities that don’t loosen housing rules. Chan rallied with her mentor Aaron Peskin against the plan and did all she could at City Hall to undermine it in the final weeks of deliberation. One of her failed proposals would have quashed nearly all upzoning in the plan.
Running for Congress, Chan says she’s not against housing — as long as it’s “housing that working people can afford. The guiding principle is that workers who build housing should also be able to afford the housing they build,” Chan tells The Frisc.
She wants to funnel federal grants and tax credits into affordable housing and rental assistance for low-income households. She’s also pledged to support Sen. Adam Schiff’s Housing BOOM Act, which would expand tax credits (a key tool for housing financing) for affordable and “missing middle” homes.
Wiener has a proposal to finance a $1.2 trillion federal housing fund by overturning tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. “Every member of Congress is hearing from constituents grappling with the issue of housing affordability every day, and that creates a really significant political opening,” Wiener tells The Frisc.
Wiener also proposes incentives to cities to build faster; Chan’s site says “deregulation won’t build the housing San Francisco needs.”
Chakrabarti says deregulation can help. He cites the housing boom in Austin, Tex. as an example of lower rents and home prices. He also wants a “national housing plan” that doubles the amount of public units in the U.S.
He’s also proposing a public national bank to help finance homes. “Nobody else is even talking about that,” Chakrabarti tells The Frisc.
Freshman plans
It’s one thing to promise big housing plans, but the winner will be a freshman among 435 members in a House divided.
“Although things have changed over the years, there still is a kind of an apprenticeship period” in the House, Massachusetts Institute of Technology political scientist Charles Stewart III tells The Frisc. “It’s really hard, unless you’re AOC, to make a huge splash. You spend the first couple of years in the chamber showing whether you’re dedicated to legislation.”
Asked about first-term plans, Wiener touts his reputation as a prolific state legislator, noted for pushing bills term after term until they eventually win enough support. “You have to choose an issue and hammer away at it with anyone who will listen,” Wiener tells The Frisc.
There’s going to be a big freshman class of Democrats. So who are the leaders? I’d be looking for political savvy rather than big ideas.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology political scientist Charles Stewart III
Chan says she’s “built a coalition of labor, neighborhood groups, and everyday residents” that she’ll “take to Washington.” She believes her coalition building skills will translate into funding for SF affordable housing and subsidies for renters.
Chakrabarti, whose former boss AOC has not endorsed or even mentioned his campaign, says he’ll spend his first term working on a longer game. “If all we’re looking at is passing small-time bills, then they’ll probably do just as good of a job as I would,” Chakrabarti says of his opponents.
He thinks there could be room for more legislation that builds upon the ROAD Act, but Chakrabarti says he’ll mostly spend the first term looking to 2028, “our New Deal moment,” which will include recruiting other candidates to run. Once he has other like-minded Democrats in the fold — his go-to slogan is “change the party” — he’ll make a bigger policy push.
“There’s going to be a big freshman class of Democrats,” says MIT’s Stewart. “So who are the leaders? Who can deliver their votes? I’d be looking for political savvy rather than big ideas.”
A rookie planning for the long term makes more sense in San Francisco than elsewhere, say analysts. California’s 11th district is one of the nation’s most reliably Democratic seats. Whoever wins in November, “I would be surprised if they weren’t in Congress for 20 years,” says local strategist Lauter.
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In 2024, Pelosi faced a 27-year-old Republican challenger, barely campaigned, and trounced him with more than 80 percent of the vote. That kind of security “allows you to build seniority,” says former London Breed aide Eric Kingsbury. “With Nancy Pelosi, it’s a big part of the reason she’s been able to accrue power the way she has.”
Between now and 2028, however, the ability to deliver specific benefits for San Francisco, whether the promise of federal housing money or something else, will depend on midterm election results in places very much unlike San Francisco.